PEORIA, Ill. - Veterans
Nate Kaiser and
Grant Moon paced the IU Indianapolis men's cross country team at the Bradley 'Pink' Classic at Newman Golf Course on Friday (Oct. 18), both finishing among the top-25 against a deep and talented field in competition. The duo helped the Jaguars to a tenth-place finish among 29 teams competing in the Red Division race.
Kaiser, making his season debut, clocked the fifth-best 8K time in program history, finishing the race in a time of 24:13.60. Just behind him, Moon surged to a 24:18.05 finish for the seventh-best time in program history. Moon climbed 13 spots over the final 1,000 meters as part of his impressive finish.
"It was a surreal feeling being back out there competing with my guys," Kaiser said. "Racing healthy again was the main objective after over two weeks of being sidelined.
"The real winner of today was (Mitchell) Gits, getting back to his best form of the year and (Luke) Shappell making a big jump and (Grant) Moon working with me for a great showing. I'm really proud of this team and look forward to conference."
Redshirt freshman
Luke Shappell continued to impress with a personal best time of 24:44.11, placing 67th overall and veteran
Mitchell Gits also ran a new personal best at 24:49.72.
Matt Mitsch rounded out the scoring five at 25:17.15.
Three freshmen followed in succession just outside of the scoring group as
Joey LaPatra ran 25:44.32 and
Riley Nixon crossed at 25:59.07.
Joey Ashman made his uniform debut at 26:00.71 and
Jay Pillai capped the Red Race entries at 27:36.71.
In the earlier White Race, freshman
Cameron Smith paced the five Jaguar entries with an 8K time of 25:58.93 in his debut in uniform. Just behind him was
Ethan Walsh at 26:02.41, who took 29 seconds off his prior best, and
Sam Grimes at 26:14.57, also in his uniform debut.
Noah Price, who was with the lead pack for the first half of the race, finished with a new personal best time of 26:21.95 and
Nicholas Probst ran 26:58.13.
Kentucky freshman Collins Kiprop Kipngok went nearly gun to finish line for the win, crossing at 23:32.66 and North Dakota State won the team title with 139 points.
The Jaguars will now turn focus to the Horizon League Championships, to be held in Green Bay, Wisc., on Nov. 2.
